Video Disk Control Protocol (VDCP) is a proprietary communications protocol primarily used to control hard diskvideo servers for broadcast television. VDCP was originally developed by Louth Automation and is commonly called the Louth Protocol. At the time it was developed when Hewlett Packard (eventually sold to Pinnacle Systems) and Grass Valley Group were both bringing to market the first of the VideoFile Servers to be used in the broadcast industry. They contacted Louth Automation who then designed the protocol basing it on Sony protocols of both the Sony LMS Storage Device and the Sony VTR. The principal work was carried out by Ken Louth and Stan Becker.
VDCP uses a tightly coupled master-slave methodology. The controlling device takes the initiative in communications between the controlling device (automation) and the controlled device (video disk). VDCP conforms to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model.
In 2001 Harris announced the introduction of NDCP, a TCP/IP-based successor for VDCP. Little information on NDCP is readily available, and thus VDCP has remained the de-facto standard.
